Last Wishes
by Roadstergal
Summary: A vignette based on Gladia's comments and Daneel's memories in Robots and Empire. Slash.


A/N: My two stories here are part of a much longer and more involved fic that I am co-writing; it will be posted on the asimovfanfic Livejournal.

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Elijah was an old man.

Not old in Spacer terms, certainly. By their standards, he was far too young to die. At his age, he thought wryly, a Spacer would perhaps just have finished with the first of many marriages, had created one set of children that he or she would never know, and would be considering how to fritter away another few centuries. But he was no Spacer, and one hundred and six was very old indeed for an Earthman.

Elijah doubted he would have lived as long on Earth. Something about the relentless physical activity of Baleyworld (he was still not used to a planet bearing his name, even if it had technically been named after Ben), its harsh winters and cruelly hot summers, the daily struggle to stay alive - it energized him, made him feel more alive than Earth's temperature-controlled Caves of Steel and zymoveal rations, the tanning under UV lamps and the communal exercise in tightly packed gymnasiums. Yes, his had been a fulfilling life, indeed.

But it was almost over.

Elijah had suffered pneumonia before, and recovered fully, and indeed had recovered from the most recent bout. But fully? No, it was difficult for him to breathe, and he was too slender and weak. He was cold all of the time, an icy chill that soaked into his bones, and he was _tired_ - so overwhelmingly tired. He could see the lie in Ben's eyes when he sat next to his father and told him he would be up and working in no time. So Elijah told Ben to stop fooling around and help him make out his will. A simple enough will, as he had little enough materially; what was on Baleyworld went to Ben, and what was on Earth went to Jessie. He still loved her, after all. Oh, she had found comfort in the arms of another man thirty years ago, but Elijah could not blame her. Her husband was across the stars where she could not go, and Elijah had hardly been faithful himself. He had slept with... no, such a terrible term. He had made love to Gladia twice, and to Daneel - ah, more than twice. Difficult enough, when Earthmen were not allowed on Spacer worlds and robots not allowed on Settler worlds, but a ship here, an official visit from Emissary Baley to an outlier Spacer world there, and it could be managed.

Not nearly often enough. He had said, so many times, that he would have asked Fasolfe for Daneel if he could. And he would have. To have faced all of the difficulties of colonization of Baleyworld with Daneel there - it would have been a certain kind of paradise. But they had made do - until Daneel's visit to Copernicus Hospital A near the end of Elijah's brief bout with peritonitis. It had been a heady few days that they had spent before Elijah was discharged, but he heard not a word from Daneel since then. Elijah had gone so far as to send a slightly panicky note to Fastolfe a few years afterwards, asking if Daneel were still functional, only to receive a slightly bemused assurance that yes, he was just fine. Elijah was left with the inescapable conclusion that Daneel had ended their... relationship? association? for reasons of his own.

Ah, but at least Elijah had his memories to console him - not to mention his right hand. Now, however, he was dying, and would they deny a dying man his one last wish? To see his dearest friend... no, more than that. To see the one he loved more than any other in this universe. Ironic that for one who hated robots as much as he did, a robot would be, in every way, the love of his life. But he could not think of Daneel as a robot. It was not just his humaniform appearance; it was his intelligence, his flexibility of thought, his unrobotic inquisitiveness, his kindness. Yes, he had all of these to a greater degree than many who were physically human. And he had Elijah's love.

It might be cruel to force a robot to see a human on his deathbed. But Elijah knew he could not die without seeing that perfect face, hearing that measured voice, one last time. And so he made his dying wish plain, irately telling his son that he could most certainly pull the strings to make it happen on the world that was named after him, couldn't he?

Feeling like every last stereotype of the crotchety old man, Elijah settled to wait, driving back the cold that wanted to still his heart, fighting off the sleep that would certainly be his last. _Daneel_, he thought forcefully, and waited.


End file.
